Sunday 3 April 2011

Solar's true potential

Age
25 March 2011, Page: 18

IT MAKES me angry when I keep coming across the old crock that solar can't provide baseload 24 hour a day power (Letters, 24/3). This line is so simplistic it is almost beyond belief. The only reason solar is not used more widely is because of vested political and corporate interests.

Molten salt storage, hydrogen fuel-cells and pumped water storage are but three methods that are being used or could be used to extend the power of solar beyond the fall of darkness. Oil and gas will eventually run out, coal will never be clean, but energy will keep falling out of the sky, and that's before you even start looking at geothermal, wind or wave/tide power.

M Lowick, Emerald

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